One of my biggest goals for 2018 was to make my quiet time a priority again. I’ve gone through seasons where I was active with spending time with the Lord and in His Word, and I’ve spent seasons where I let that fall to the wayside because I was too “busy” and didn’t make this a priority.
If I’ve learned anything over the last decade of being a grown up, life will ALWAYS be fighting for your time. I’ve learned that no matter what season you are in, there will always be something fighting for your attention and desperately trying to pull your mind away from things that matter.
I love this quote:
“[If] We are too busy to pray, and we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results.” -R. A. Torrey
I don’t know about you… But I seem to find that “busy” comes up a lot on my calendar. I’m too busy to do things I enjoy, or hang out with friends, or do this extra thing. Even when I have a free weekend, I seem to somehow fill it up with things on my to-do list that I’ve been wanting to get done. Whatever the case or instance may be, I’ve learned that I need to not just try to do quiet time “when I can” but instead make it a mandatory part of my time.
“Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees.” –Corrie ten Boom
So in this post, I just want to walk you through the things that I do to help walk me through my quiet time. I’m a big believer in equipping yourself for distractions, cause I notice that when I started doing my quiet time more and more, I felt like it was harder for me to focus on reading and in prayer. So helped make my quiet time look a little different by adding in things that help keep me on track when I have those moments of distraction.
“Ten minutes spent in the presence of Christ every day, aye, two minutes, will make the whole day different.” – Henry Drummond
What I use in my quiet time:
+ One: Jesus Calling Devotional (large and small version, depending)
+ Two: Jesus Bible by Passion City Church (here)
+ Three: Journal for notes (here’s a few cute ones: link, link, link)
+ Four: NIV Bible (similar | this one has room for journaling/doodling)
+ Five: Val Marie Prayer Journal (here)
+ Six: Rifle Paper Co – 5 Year Journal (here)
So here’s my typical quiet time routine:
I generally wake up an hour before I need to get ready for work/start my day. This is general 5:30 a.m. (yes, that eaaaaarly!!!). I go downstairs, so I don’t bother my husband with lights or noise. I make some fresh coffee, then sit down at the dining room table and get to it!
Like I previously mentioned, I learned that I get pretty easily distracted during my quiet time, especially if I miss a day or two. It’s definitely getting better… But I also have a routine down now, that I love and look forward to every morning.
So first things first, I’ll usually take a sip of coffee then say a little prayer. After that, it’s honestly free game as to what I do in what order, but I always do the same things. So I’ll just explain what I do, with each item.
Jesus Calling Devotional
NIV Bible
Everyone has their preference, and I love NIV. I think it’s mostly because it’s the Bible translation that I grew up with, so it’s the version that I have the most verses of scripture memorized. Daniel bought me this Bible as a wedding gift, and gave it to me at our rehearsal dinner nearly 6 years ago! So thankful for this gift and for all the
This is not one of those journaling Bibles, but that hasn’t stopped me from lettering it up!
Jesus Bible by Passion City Church
We’re blessed to call Passion our home church (it’s based here in Atlanta) and this resource came out at Passion Conference last year. I absolutely love it! I’ve been rereading through the Old Testament, and what I love about this translation is that it has a lot of commentary and reference to help give context. I’m 100% a context girl, as I like to know the full story and not just part, so this has been extremely helpful! I’m not gonna lie… It’s a big Bible! So when I’m traveling, I’ll just use my regular Bible, so that my backpack doesn’t start to weight 50+ pounds (a common struggle I’ve had my whole life). Anyways, so with this resource, I’m just reading through the O.T.!
Journals, Journals, Journals
If you know me but at all, you’ll know that I am absolutely journal obsessed. If you can’t tell in the blog cover photo, I literally have four different journals that I use with my quiet time. Four! So I’m a bit journal obsessed, but I like it that way. As weird as it might sound, I have a different journal for different things, and I feel like it collects my thoughts in a more organized fashion when I do it this way. To each their own, right?
So you’re probably wondering… Okay, well what do you use all those journals for?
+ Regular/Sermon Journal – This was my “everything” journal for a long time (my thoughts, prayers, praises, sermon notes and sometimes to-do lists or ideas for my business) and I started to feel like there was just too much going on in there! Every time I would try to look back and reference something, it would have trouble finding it. Or I would try to pray through some things, and get distracted by my to-do list. So I decided that I needed to separate things out a bit!
+ Prayer Journal – So like I mentioned above, I decided to start a prayer journal. I chose a thin notebook that I could easily carry around with me, and I have people on my prayer list written out as a list. For me, this keeps things easy! There are a few pages where I go into specific things, but for the most part, I love to write down a person or an issue, and when I come to that in my prayer time, I let the holy spirit lead and help me figure out what needs to be said in that given moment. I really love praying like this! I feel like it does two things:
1) It helps me to stay focused when praying (otherwise it’s easy for me to be like the disciples and fall asleep, or get distracted by something else).
2) It keeps me focused on the holy spirit. I think one of the most rewarding and beautiful ways to pray is when you open yourself up to praying over what the spirit wants you to focus on. I do this a lot when I pray over my person life. God knows the desires of my heart, but He also knows so much more and better things that I do. So sometimes I like to just openly pray, share my heart, but also be open to what God might have in mind. Does that make sense?
+ Gratitude Journal –
Val Marie Prayer Journal
So I’m calling this one out, because the VMP team reached out and asked if I would want to partner with them. I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about their journals and actually had it on my birthday list earlier this month to get it… So I thought, “Heck yes, this will work out perfectly!” As I mentioned above, I’ve previously been writing my prayers in a blank
Rifle Paper – 5 Year Devotion
So, this isn’t technically a part of my quiet time, in the sense that it doesn’t further my relationship with the Lord. However, something that I regret over the last 6 years of being married to Daniel, is how little I journaled our memories! I have felt a strong calling to document the everyday moments on paper, but I found that an open journal would intimidate me, and I would feel compelled to almost give a minute-by-minute retelling of my day… And spending two hours journaling what happened that day, just isn’t very realistic.
So I picked this up and I absolutely love it! There’s only about a paragraph of lines, so it literally takes me about 3-5 minutes to fill it out. I’ve just lumped it into my quiet time, because it’s the last thing I do – it’s kind of how I wrap up, or put a check mark on my quiet time, before heading up to get ready for the day.
Okay, whew! I know that’s a lot of information. If that’s a little too much to read, I did put it all in a little video. It’s a long video – because obviously I’m passionate about this stuff and can be quite the talker when it comes to quiet time.
VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO
If you have any questions about my process, or any suggestions, I’m all ears! Also, I did want to brag about the VMP prayer journal a little more. I think the best way to describe it, is via their product description from their page:
You might think the term “prayer warrior” is reserved for that girl on Instagram who’s daily gleaning wisdom from the Bible over a delicious cup of coffee. Or maybe “prayer warrior” makes you think of the friend you always know will pray for you.
Here’s the truth and some good news: Being a prayer warrior is a learned skill and I want to set you up with an amazing tool to learn it! Yep. Even in this noisy world full of all it’s distractions.
PRAYER SECTIONS: World & Nation / My Community / My Loves / My Family / Sweet Friends / The Burdens / Personal / Answered Prayers / Scripture / Quote
If you have any questions about Val Marie’s Prayer Journal, or any of the other books I talked about, please leave a comment and let me know!
I’d also love to know – what does your quiet time look like?
